Dedicated to seeking out the misinformation of the right wing machine.
Main Entry: 1lib·er·al
Pronunciation: 'li-b(&-)r&l
Function: adjective
1. Liberal -- Not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas; free from bigotry.
2. Favoring proposals for reform, open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded.

Monday, June 25, 2007

Tricky Dick Should Be Laughed Out Of Washington.

From Democratic Underground's Top Ten Conservative Idiots:

Dick Cheney sure loves to claim executive privilege. Remember this?

In the face of political pressure to comply with congressional investigators, Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday he will not release internal documents connected to the development of President Bush's energy plan.

That refusal is expected to fuel political outcries that the administration is hiding information about its relationship with Enron Corp., and may prompt the General Accounting Office -- Congress' nonpartisan investigative arm -- to file a rare lawsuit against the White House.

Cheney, who was asked on Sunday-morning news programs to defend his position, said White House attorneys looked into the matter and concluded that documents gathered by the task force he headed are protected by the rules of executive privilege. -- Houston Chronicle, 2002

And this?

Because Libby and Cheney were so involved in US policy, ''you'll see a lot come out" about the lead-up to the Iraq invasion, Fortier said, creating more headaches for an administration defending an increasingly unpopular war.

The Bush White House is ''particularly jealous" about keeping administration documents and decision-making from public view, Fortier said. He predicted that Cheney, who fought and won the right to keep the work of the energy task force secret, may well try to exert executive privilege if he is called to testify. -- Boston Globe, 2005

And this?

A new executive privilege battle is looming in Washington as a federal appeals court considers whether to intervene in an election-eve dispute over records of visitors to Vice President Cheney's home at the Naval Observatory, as well as his offices in the White House complex.

(snip)

"Disclosure of the records at issue could reveal an ever-expanding mosaic that would allow observers to chart the course of vice presidential contacts and deliberations in unprecedented fashion," government attorneys argued in a brief filed yesterday. "Such an unwarranted intrusion into the most sensitive deliberations of the vice presidency cannot be countenanced." -- New York Sun, 2006

Well hold onto your hats and let the spin begin! It turns out that for the last four years, despite repeatedly claiming executive privilege to avoid having to do such annoying things as testify before Congress, Dick Cheney has been preventing the National Archives' Information Security Oversight Office from performing a mandatory inspection of his office by claiming - get this - that he's not part of the Executive Branch. According to the Los Angeles Times:

For the last four years, Vice President Dick Cheney has made the controversial claim that his office is not fully part of the Bush administration in order to exempt it from a presidential order regulating federal agencies' handling of classified national security information, officials said Thursday.

Cheney has held that his office is not fully part of the executive branch of government despite the continued objections of the National Archives, which says his office's failure to demonstrate that it has proper security safeguards in place could jeopardize the government's top secrets.

How convenient! The vice president is a member of the Executive Branch when he needs to claim executive privilege, but not a member of the Executive Branch when that would mean having to open his records to the National Archives.

You know, this kinda reminds me of the time in 2003 that Cheney said of Halliburton, "I've severed all my ties with the company, gotten rid of all my financial interest. I have no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind and haven't had, now, for over three years," and then it turned out that just two years later his Halliburton stock options rose by 3,281%.

Talk about having your cake and eating it. (Or in Cheney's case, having your blood and drinking it.)